


The Ghost of Coal Hill and Other Phenomenon

by FernDavant



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Coal Hill School, F/M, petty theft of vinyl, slight themes of depression, the Doctor interacting with children, whouffaldi appreciation 2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6337882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernDavant/pseuds/FernDavant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara tries to keep the Doctor away from Coal Hill. But the Doctor seems to like the school. He shows up a lot of Wednesday’s, well before they’re scheduled to meet, and just wanders around the school for hours. And he's making friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of Coal Hill and Other Phenomenon

**Author's Note:**

> For the Whouffaldi Appreciation 2k16 challenge. Prompts: classroom, "move over," vinyl records. Gratuitous Classic Who references. Clara's a little sad in this, but it ends happily.

She tries to keep him away from Coal Hill after the whole caretaker debacle and that moon thing. It’s marginally successful—Clara defines success when it comes to the Doctor when something works somewhere between 35-70% of the time, though—but after Danny dies, and then the Doctor shows up again, she stops trying.

She stops trying to do a lot of things after Danny dies.

But the Doctor seems to _like_ the school. He shows up a lot of Wednesday’s, well before they’re scheduled to meet, and just wanders around the school for hours.

“They’re going to lock you up,” Clara warns. “They’ll think you’re a sex predator.”

“What’s a sex predator?” the Doctor asks.

Clara sighs. She is not having this discussion. “Does what it says on the tin. Put it together.”

But somehow, no one says anything. The Doctor sort of just talks his way out of things, as he usually does. The kids cotton on to his deceptions more easily than the adults, as is always the way but even they fail to come up with a solid answer for him (“Is he related to Miss Oswald or something?” “Relatives don’t look at each other like he looks at Miss Oswald.” “He’s too old to be her boyfriend.” “He told me he was an alien.” “Miss Oswald has an alien?”).

The Doctor begins befriending some of the students. This isn’t surprising; Clara has found that accepting that in some ways the Doctor is just an adolescent boy has let her deploy well-known tactics to curb some of his more _exuberant_ behavior. He has the perfect mindset to be friends with any number of adolescents.

Hearing that he’s taking some of these students on trips, however, panics Clara slightly more. There’s the danger, of course. But there’s also the fact that going back in time allows students to cheat on history assignments or receive tutoring in physics from Isaac Newton himself, which seems a bit unfair.

But…Clara can’t help but make only the feeblest protests to stop him. Because he always seems to choose the students Clara herself was worrying about: the students who were failing; the students who were being bullied or doing the bullying; the students hiding their tears; the too quiet students; the students who have suffered a loss; the students just barely keeping it together. And he makes them better. He is a sort-of adult figure that listens to them, and at that age, sometimes that’s all they need. He can be brusque, he can be weird, but there’s something about him that _helps._ She’s figure that out well enough for herself.

She finds him one day, carefully showing Parminder how similar chords on the piano and chords on the guitar can be.

“You don’t have to quit. You can be radical and still play the piano,” the Doctor says.

“Are we going?” Clara asks from the door frame of the music room.

Both the Doctor and Parminder look at her guiltily.

“I’m busy, Clara,” the Doctor says finally. “Give me a moment.”

That’s her line, usually. The fact that he’s decided Parminder is more important than an adventure makes her heart constrict in strange ways.

~~

She hides in her classroom sometimes, during lunch or non-mandatory staff meetings, avoiding conversations she’d rather not have, and pleasantries to perform that she almost feels she doesn’t have time for anymore. Death is a tangible thing, chasing her, chasing everyone, and she has to cram every last moment of her life with things that _matter_.

Or maybe she’s just hiding.

It doesn’t matter, because he comes into the classroom and hides with her, sonicking the door even if she locks it. He will inevitably make a nuisance of himself: critiquing her students’ work and her lesson plans alike, keeping a non-stop commentary going, stealing school supplies, mucking about with the dry erase board.

“Why aren’t there chalkboards anymore? I like chalkboards,” the Doctor asks, drawing the circles and swirls Clara recognizes as the Doctor’s own language, all over the dry erase board.

“You have plenty of chalkboards in the TARDIS, which you could be in, if you wanted to,” Clara replies. “Besides, chalk makes a mess.”

“I like a mess.”

“That you do,” Clara agrees, half-turning towards the Doctor. “Why do you insist on spending so much time at Coal Hill, suddenly?”

The Doctor pauses, “I like this school. My granddaughter used to go here.”

Before Clara can figure out how to respond to _that_ , she realizes the Doctor has been writing on the board with permanent marker.

She should’ve seen that one coming. After all, he likes a mess.

~~

A school, especially one with a building as old as this, has its own quirks, its own history. Children are superstitious, even in the age of smartphones. Or especially in the age of smartphones, because Snopes isn’t going to interest itself in what a cadre of schoolchildren believe about a random secondary school in London.

Anyway, Coal Hill is haunted. And these ghosts bring with them the Curse of Coal Hill. These are _the facts_. Everyone knows this. It started in the 1960s, when all of the staff was possessed. And then that girl disappeared, never to be seen again. And then two teachers suddenly had a religious conversion, going on a missionary trip for two years, falling completely off the grid, so obviously that had been the work of the ghost as well.

Any creak, anything that falls. Any strange shadow, any strange noises. Obviously, these are all signs of the haunting. Grant saw something right creepy on parent’s night last year, too. The ghost’s curse is probably what killed Mr. Pink too. (“A car killed Mr. Pink.” “Yeah, well, it was suspicious alright.” “Maybe the ghost was driving the car.” “Stop taking the piss. Hey. Shut it. Oswald’s coming.”)

“Are you the ghost of Coal Hill?” Clara finally asks.

The Doctor tilts his head at her like she’s gone mad. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“I know that,” Clara says, although she really isn’t sure that she does know that, not for certain, at least, after all the things she’s seen and done. “That’s why I’m asking if you’re the ghost. Because obviously the ghost isn’t real.”

“What’s the ghost of Coal Hill?” the Doctor asks, face scrunched up.

“I don’t know. It possessed some teachers, killed some girl, and attacked Charlie Grant on parent’s night.”

“You think I killed a girl?” the Doctor says, alarmed.

“No, of course not. I think there’s some sort of weird misunderstanding. I also don’t think you attacked Charlie Grant on parent’s night. I think Charlie Grant might’ve saw a Skovox Blitzer on parent’s night. You know, it’s okay if you don’t want to answer my questions. It was just a random thought. I was just curious as to how you caused the Chairman of the Governors, Mr. Chesterton, to have a massive religious conversion.”

“Chatterton’s still here?” the Doctor asks brightly, a far off look in his eyes and a smile on his face. “Good ole Chatterton.”

“Chesterton,” Clara corrects, and then more softly, to herself. “Wonder if he taught P.E.?”

She doesn’t know if Mr. Chesterton taught P.E., but she does hear that he is unreasonably amused when that odd man who used to be the caretaker breaks into a governors meeting, babbling about ‘the Chumblies.’

Clara stops concerning herself with the Ghost of Coal Hill or the Curse of Coal Hill when she runs into Mr. Chesterton one day, and he tells her, with a wink and a grin, how travel is good for self-improvement.

~~

She loses him one day, spends a half-hour after classes end trying to find him, and finally finds him in a history classroom, sitting cross-legged under a picture of Henry IV. Judging by the sweets and crisp wrappers and the record player, either he’s been holding court with some of the students, or he’s in a particularly poor mood.

“Move over,” Clara says, nudging him a little and sitting down next to him, between him and the record player. She reaches over to the other side of the player, flipping through a stack of vinyl. “What’s this?”

“It’s a record player,” the Doctor replies, talking to Clara s though she’s stupid. “I don’t know if you know them, but they used to be quite popular some time ago.”

“I know what a record player is,” Clara scowls. “I meant the records.”

“Boring, mostly,” the Doctor complains. “I found them in a storage cupboard, and so many of them are educational in that way that is not interesting or very educational at all.”

“You’ve nicked these from Coal Hill?” Clara asks, gesturing between the stack of records and the player with a copy of “Je Parle Francais!”

“Don’t be stupid,” the Doctor replies. “I nicked the record player from Marc Bolan. The _records_ are from your school.”

“Oh, yes. Silly me,” Clara says, before gently tapping him with a record. “What’ve you been doing?”

“I was trying to teach music appreciation,” the Doctor begins petulantly with a frown, “But there’s nothing much to appreciate with these records.”

“You know,” Clara says, slowly, still flipping through the vinyl, but now using it as an excuse to avoid looking him in the eyes. “I’ve been meaning to thank you.”

“For what?’ the Doctor asks, his tone hesitant and more than a little worried. He gets skittish when she’s nice sometimes, as though it’s an act, as though at any moment she’s going to do something that will make him miserable, or push him away again. She hates that tone; it makes guilt rise like bile in her throat.

“For what you’ve been doing with the students.”

“What’ve I been doing with the students?”

Clara does look up at him now. She thinks he might be fishing for compliments, but his face has a genuinely puzzled look. “Oh, you know. For putting them in danger. For encouraging delinquency. For making them happy.”

The Doctor is still looking at her like this whole thing is an elaborate trick, searching her face for some sign. Watching him look at her like that makes her blush and break eye contact again for reasons she can’t, or maybe doesn’t want to, explain.

“You’re welcome,” the Doctor replies finally. It’s genuine, and it’s polite, and it means even more coming from him.

Impulsively, Clara leans over and kisses his cheek. He stares off into the middle distance, wide-eyed, for a long enough period of time that she’s a little worried she might have crashed his operating system or something. 404 Time Lord Not Found.

Finally, though, he mutely reaches over to hold one of her hands, and he’s back. He even gives her hand a squeeze.

“Peter and the Wolf,” Clara says suddenly, whacking him with a vinyl. “Done by David Bowie. Not rubbish at all.”

The Doctor frowns. “He’s not singing. Why would you have David Bowie if he’s not going to sing?”

“So, do you just fast-forward _Labyrinth_ until he’s singing?”

“Yes,” the Doctor replies. “Well, no. I fast-forward until he’s singing or until there’s puppets. I’m quite discerning, Clara.”

“I imagine that makes the first part of the film rather confusing,” Clara reflects. “Anyway, I’m putting on Peter and the Wolf.”

The Doctor flaps his hands at her like she’s being an idiot. She’s not surprised when he ends up absolutely enraptured by the performance though.

The _actual_ caretaker kicks them out a little while later when he finds them under the Henry IV poster, Clara half dozing on the Doctor’s shoulder while the Doctor taps along to the rhythm of the music from Peter and the Wolf. It was worth it, though.


End file.
